The DI's Ten Rules to Keeping With Your Goals

Read my other top ten if you just started running. If you're already in the trenches though, use the following to keep your fanny from going soft:

10. Thou shalt remember that the first three workouts are fun. The next three are hell, and from then on, it will be an "invigorating drag."

9. Thou shalt exercise no fewer than three times per week. Any less, and you are a failure.

8. Thou shalt run where people can see you. For 30 minutes, 5 times a week, you're high on endorphines and they're not. Lazy assholes.

7. Thou shalt embrace your iPod as a close friend, and training partner. It may make you look like a douchebag in the grocery store, but it will save your life in the final 400 meters.

6. Thou shalt make a plan. Whether it's to run 5 miles without stopping, or to just get out five times a week, you have to give yourself something to work toward. Let me repeat myself. Thou shalt make a plan. I cannot stress enough, how important this is.

5. Thou shalt never assume that running two days in a row makes you exempt for three.
Stop being such an underachieving twat.

4. Thou shalt alter your routine. You cannot expect to continue developing results by spending three weeks on the same route, going the same distance, and performing the same reps. Your body will quickly adapt to the predictability, and find ways to cut corners.

3. Thou shalt lie to your body. Plan to run 2 miles, get dressed, stretch, and run three. If your brain expects the "next power line" to be the finish, run five more.

2. Thou shalt not use analogies referring to or containing the seizing of "the day", "bulls" and/or "horns" in vain. These are serious expressions, and not to be carelessly exploited for your pitiful and temporary motivation.

1. Thou shalt overcome temptation. The single hardest part of any workout is lacing up your shoes. Double those knots, and get your lazy arse out the front door.

Gaijin Whorage II

So this is where the J-magic happens.

I was adjusting the sleeves on my lab coat in front of the bedroom's wall mirror--a large, opulent device performing its reflective duties in full view of the grand poster bed, and teal pool glow. While the director and crew went over shot placement and set up studio lights and camera booms, I casually fiddled with the soft pink dimmers, and browsed the sex toy catalog on the marble coffee table. It was all just too funny. As I was playing with the dimmers on the room light, pretending I was on the holodeck of some starship brothel, a portly audio tech wobbled in with a wireless mic in his hands, and a puzzled expression on his face.

So, we were shooting the experiment's re-enactment at a pool after all. It just so happened to be that the most feasible place in Osaka to shoot a pool scene, was in a typical Japanese love hotel.
Where people pay for a themed room in which to have sex.
It's a simple concept really. Take your lover / hooker / best friend's wife to the hotel, press the button of the room you want, slide your money under the opaque teller's window, and then head upstairs to pound the morning / afternoon / night away. Or just the hour--depending on how much money you think sex with...
[ please choose from the following: ] is worth.*

[A] ...somebody you just met
[B] ...somebody wearing a schoolgirl's uniform
[C] ...-out waking the entire neighborhood
[D] ...someone on a Hello Kitty-shaped bed

We were in the master suite on the roof. The most decadent of all rooms in this silly den of iniquity. The Flava-Flav royal honeymoon suite, towering above an entire hotel of lesser honeymoon suites. While this particular one had an "island resort" theme to it, I've since heard of other themes involving certain cartoon characters, hospitals, classrooms, medieval castles, pirate ships, the Taj Mahal, and other such exotic getaways.

The shallow pool lay under a massive, retractable moon roof, and ran the entire length of the suite, with full two-way windows into the bedroom, shower room, and adjacent sauna. How the camera crew planned to keep television audiences from seeing the palm trees and sandy beach slide show projected along the walls, I had no idea. But I wanted to believe they could. Just as I wanted to believe that the pool had been thoroughly flushed and refilled since its last "use." The professor Cussler stand-in seemed terribly concerned that props would be putting gel or syrup into the pool he'd soon be swimming in, to most faithfully recreate the experiment. So we're standing waist-deep in a pool attached to a suite in an Osaka hotel tailored towards having as much fantasy animal sex in as short a time as possible, and he's concerned about touching a little jello?? His wife must be a Japanese nun.
Silly me. Here, I was contracting an advanced strain of scabies just from the uncomfortable thought of what people had been doing a few hours before, in the very spot I had been instructed to leave my socks. I know how to say "I only touched the doorknob" in Japanese, but I've yet to learn "Does this look infected?" or "Will it fall off?" Sure, I had my lab coat, and all three of my lines memorized, but I still felt woefully unprepared.

Later that evening, while scrubbing my hands and face with toilet cleaner and burning my socks, I wondered how places like this managed to exist within a country globally reputed for being sexless and reserved. But maybe love hotels function for a different purpose--rather, not for killing a quick hour, or getting back at an old ex, but instead, a higher calling:

Little Shinichiro: "Mommy, where do babies come from?"
Mommy: "Well honey, when two people love each other very much, and are dressed up as pirates..."

So this is why the birth rate is so low? My grand J-train epiphany that night in front of the sink:
The trouble it takes to produce optimal circumstances required for copulation in Japan far outweighs the benefit. That, being a child.
Or something.

Aah shit, that wasn't very intelligent.




* Kindly feel free to insert** your own "bang for your buck" pun in the comments.

** Heh heh heh. "Insert."

Thou Shalt Never Quit: The DI's Ten Commandments to Getting Started

Exercising sucks. Honestly, it blows ass. I'm not going to lie. If it weren't for the natural endorphine high (more on this later), I don't know why anyone would bother. I know I most certainly wouldn't. I like to think endorphines are God's way of subtly suggesting that getting and staying in shape is worth it. But you can't get in shape in three hours, three days, or even three weeks (if you suck bad enough). It takes time, and it takes effort. So I created a list to keep my lazy side in check, which I recently stapled it to my forehead--just for that extra reminder. Getting it tattooed would probably be less painful.
But not as awesome.

10. Thou shalt not try to set any world records during your first week. You are not Carl Lewis. And you are out of shape.

9. Thou shalt swallow your pride and run in sets. Rome wasn't conquered in a day. Same goes for that spare tire.

8. Thou shalt not cancel your workouts due to inclement weather. Just stay out from under the trees.

7. Thou shalt tie your shoelaces in double knots. There is no excuse pathetic enough to justify stopping to catch your breath.

6. Thou shalt not listen to "Eye of the Tiger" for motivation. The Cold War is over, and you are not Rocky Balboa. Tacky bitch.

5. Thou shalt reward yourself for achieving noteworthy milestones. With equipment. Food rewards are for the Weight Watchers.

4. Thou shalt not trivialize calories by counting them. You are not a supermodel. Besides, they fuel every mile you conquer.

3. Thou shalt start slow, and pace yourself. You should be comfortable at the two-minute mark, not ready to drop dead.

2. Thou shalt understand that only giant pussies exchange their "sore muscle" tokens at the loser wagon for extra days off. Soreness is progress, not some debilitating disease.

1. And for the last 400 meters, thou shalt run as though you are Carl Lewis. Don't worry, the delicious endorphines will numb the threatening taste of sour vomit.

This one's for fighting, and this one's for fun

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"Thou shalt not pimp my ride"

10. Informal: "To overwhelm with hilarity, pleasure, or admiration."

"Eg: The outstanding finale killed the audience."

I've since amended my "don't regurgitate internet drivel" mantra, opting to add after the words "internet drivel," the phrase: "unless it speaks to me in a way that makes me scratch my chin, or pee a little."
But while reading up on the latest shitstorm behind a band that frequents my iPod, I stumbled across this incredible gem of a verse.



Moments ago, I just deleted several paragraphs that detailed exactly how and why this song hit me as hard as it did. But analyzations seemed so completely out of place, in a song so perfectly freaking simple.

The poet Dan Le Sac is going to be huge. You've been warned.